Page 1 of Protect and Serve

Chapter One

“You’re driving too fast.”

Claire Silver took her foot off the gas and glanced at Porsche. It was so nice having a friend who liked to control the universe. “Do you want to drive?”

Porsche turned away and sniffed.

“Yeah. I thought so.” Porsche never wanted to drive. She preferred to let someone else do the work. And to bark orders at random intervals. She loved barking orders.

“It’s just that you do that.”

Claire frowned. “Do what?”

“Go all introspective. Fall silent. Speed.”

“I do not speed.” She checked the speedometer and lifted her lead foot once more. The road from town to the ranch was long, straight and boring, but that was hardly an excuse.

“What are you thinking about anyway that makes your face scrunch up like that?”

“My face is not scrunching up.” It wasn’t. She wasn’t annoyed or fretting in the slightest. Panic and desperation were not crawling up her spine like big black hairy spiders.

Twenty-five wasn’t that old. Her life wasn’t over. Not yet.

Porsche fiddled with the strap to her purse. “Your face is definitely scrunching. Are you worried about the wedding?”

Claire’s gut heaved. “No. Why would I be worried about the wedding?” It wasn’t her wedding. Would it ever be? It wasn’t as though she hadn’t had a chance to get married. She had. Dustin had asked her several times. But she’d turned him down. Each and every time. She couldn’t regret it. Her heart had told her no.

But that had been five years ago. She’d thought she had plenty of time to find him. That perfect man.

He hadn’t shown up.

She despaired he ever would.

But then, why would he? Why would he come to Snake Gully of all places? It was the kind of place people wanted to escape.

She wanted to escape, but her brothers needed her and she’d spent her whole life in this town. Nearly everyone she knew in the world lived here. Besides, she’d tried living in the city. She just wasn’t a city kind of girl. She’d hated the traffic and the pushing and the people everywhere.

There was no peace in the city. Not like she could find lying in a field at night and staring up at the stars with the music of crickets and rustling grass as her accompaniment. She loved her job, her family, the ranch. Her life was practically perfect. There was only one thing missing.

And time was running out.

“You’re doing it again.”

Claire glared at Porsche and touched the brakes.

Twenty-five wasn’t that old. Was it?

And that gray hair she’d found this morning at her temple? Surely that was an anomaly. Surely the buzzing in her head wasn’t her biological clock blaring a strident alarm. Mate. Mate. Mate.

She had a sudden vision of herself sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of the ranch house, wearing a shawl she’d crocheted herself and surrounded by cats. She shuddered.

She hated to crochet.

Porsche huffed a sigh and said, “Well, I don’t blame you for stressing—”

“I’m not stressing.”

“Weddings are a big deal. A lot of details to think about.”